The way we communicate to our customers is important in the service 
industry, but it's just as important for owners/CEO's/Executives to communicate with their teams to find out what's going on with customers.
Tim Whelan talks about a restaurant he visited and makes note of what makes this particular restaurant stand out from the rest...
"They would sit down with their entire crew including Directors and discuss the business once a week. The employees were empowered with the power to drive the feedback. In other words the employee was their primary feedback instrument. They were the first line of interaction in engaging the customer and the primary resource to recieve customer feedback. This allowed the employees to drive the primary change in the business based on their engaging of the customer and what they learned."
What are you doing today to communicate with your team?
Yes, this is a good way to manage a team as well as monitor individual performance. This strategy however is one-sided, albeit requiring a lot of trust---trusting that the feedback the employee gives is accurate---on the part of management. If done with other feedback-getting strategies and team-building activities, this will surely earn wonderful results.
(I still owe you one =). Will be coming out with it soon.)
Posted by: Meikah Delid | April 20, 2006 12:09 AM | Permalink to Comment